Category Archives: Family

Kiley at six months

Happy Sixth MonthKiley’s six month update has a lot to do with her mouth, what goes in it, and what it produces. Since November sixth, she has started making more pronounced sounds like “nah, nah, nah, nine, nine, nine” (I think she might be German) instead of just cooing and “ahhs.” She will look at our mouths as we talk to her, as if to figure out what we are doing and how to say something herself.

Continuing with her mouth, we had Thanksgiving a little early this year because I had to go to work. She got her first taste of baby food: turkey and gravy, sweet potatoes, and applesauce for dessert. She gagged on all of it, so we had to give her a bottle afterward. On the real Thanksgiving day, she got prunes and loved them! The following day she got more and was excited when she saw them in the container and opened her mouth wide to accept them. With the baby food came the first massive BM that ended with her getting cut out of her onesie. Gone are the milk only poopies!
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House Frame

Our house that is being built down in Dallas is coming along. The foundation is poured and the first level is framed. The wood arrived after 12:30 in the afternoon, and by six pm, when this picture was taken, the first floor was complete! We are happy about the progress on the house and look forward to seeing it go up, bit by bit.

Kiley at five months

Strawberry GirlOn November sixth, Kiley turned five months old, so we wanted to catch you up on what’s been going on since the first week of October.

So far, she is still tiny, but is growing and the pediatrician says that she acts older than her age suggests. She loves to flash huge smiles at strangers and laughed out loud for the first time. I was traveling to Los Angeles when I received a text from Laura with the audio of the laughing — it brought tears to my eyes in the Denver Airport!

She is starting to babble and talk a lot, notice Gus being around her and loves to hold our finger when sitting in our lap. We started her on formula this month, taking one ounce, then two a few hours later. By the next day, she was holding her bottle and getting excited when she saw it enter the room. At the same time we added the bottle, we were able to get rid of the gas drops finally. We use Dr. Brown’s bottles to cut down on gas and burping, and they’ve done a great job.

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Kiley-O-Lantern

A few days ago, we visited a pumpkin patch to get some pictures of Kiley with the autumn pumpkins. While there taking photos, we bought a pumpkin to put her in it, just for fun. Today, we carved that pumpkin out, plopped her in it, stood back with a camera, and waited to see what would happen. Unfortunately, the skies were gray and so was Kiley’s mood. She wasn’t too happy and the smiling pictures were few and far between. We’ll try it again, and if we get any winners we’ll add them to the photo gallery linked above.

New House

It’s official: We are moving to Texas! We’ve had this idea prayerfully on our minds for a little over a year, and now we feel the time is right. There are a whole host of reasons for making this big decision and we feel that the benefits of a move overwhelmingly outweigh the reasons for staying in Ohio. After looking for a long time at buying a house, we found the perfect house to build instead. Building a house means we won’t be moving for a few more months but our patience will be rewarded with a wonderful new home.

We had been looking to buy a house for quite some time. A lot of internet searches on potential homes was agonizing work and searching from Ohio for a house in Texas proved to be more challenging than I originally thought. It is one thing to look at a house on a computer screen; it’s another to see it in person, along with its school system, the street it’s on, the neighborhood, and so forth. We knew we wanted to be close to the airport and also close to my sister and her husband. We also wanted to be near their wonderful church, Bent Tree. We would fly down and look at 8-10 homes at a time, take lots of notes, and hope the houses wouldn’t run together in our minds afterward.
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Kiley at four months

We want to share Kiley’s four month pictures with you today. She continues to grow, albeit slowly, and her acid reflux problems are really starting to taper off. We are so thankful that she is able to enjoy herself more during the day, either because her medicine is keeping the reflux at bay, or because she is growing out of that phase. Both may be true, but a happy baby makes for happy parents. She smiles a lot, especially during the day.

This month included a lot of firsts. She discovered her toes last month, but now wants to taste them. Her big right toe must be extra tasty because she sucks on it the most. Even though we missed it, she rolled from her back to her belly for the first time. I walked past her on the floor and asked Laura why she laid her on her stomach and Laura said that she laid her on her back! This is also the first month to be sleeping in the nursery, even though she is still in her bassinet to help with her reflux.
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